Monday, October 31, 2011

Do you ever suffer from foot-in-mouth disease? What about writer's remorse? I am plagued by both on a pretty regular basis, and I'm going with that as my excuse for my absence for nearly two months.

I've noticed that lately I just don't know how to keep my mouth shut. It's not that I blab the secrets of others or participate in gossip...I just honestly can not stop running my mouth. I will decide that I want to keep something to myself even if just for just a few days, but do you think I can do it? Not a chance. It's like my brain decides that hey, maybe not everyone needs to know my business all the time, but that filter between the brain and the mouth is entirely disconnected. Before I know it, I actually hear myself saying the very words I swore I wouldn't speak out-loud. My brain is simultaneously shouting at me "YOU IDIOT! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?! WE WEREN'T GOING TO TALK ABOUT THAT. EVER!"
Now sometimes I may decide I don't want to nor should I speak because there's risk that my words may come across as insulting. Sometimes it's because I know I have a habit of saying the first thing that comes to mind and always come up with something better when it's too late. Mostly it's because I realize that I've had a lot of stressful things going on in my life lately and that when I discuss these things with individuals, it makes me sound either very negative, or a little bit sociopathic. I haven't decided which. Either way? It's not good.

Prime example:
My anxiety has been flaring up a bit recently (something I'm sure I'll elaborate on in a future entry), and I've noticed that one of many themes to this anxiety centralizes around the fear of someone breaking into my house to kidnap/murder me and quite likely the Husband too. So when Hubby suggests that we go see "Straw Dogs" and I end up asking him to please explain again what the movie is about, I have to gently point out that going to see a movie which involves a young couple battling crazy townies who are breaking into their house to kill them might not be a great idea for me right now. Upon reflecting why I'm so unnecessarily focused on people breaking in I have a flashback to a point in my childhood where a friend and a cousin and I are having a sleepover on the floor of a bedroom in my aunt's house. There's a weird shadow being cast on the wall, and I painstakingly spend a great deal of time trying to convince the girls I'm with, that the shadow is of a man with a pointy nose and a hat who is on a ladder outside of our second-floor window waiting for us to fall asleep so that he can break in and steal us. I had them convinced to the point of tears. I was about 8 years old.
So when today at work while my colleagues and I were sitting at our respective work stations working quietly and diligently I felt the need to share this story? I DON'T KNOW. Why I'm sharing this on the internet? Well, that brings me to my next affliction....

Writers remorse.

I'm quite confident we've all suffered from this at one point or another. Remember when you were a kid and how you kept a diary where all you and your boy-obsessed brain could write about was who you had a crush on and how you were destined for wedded bliss and babies with a fast car and a mansion? No? Alright, the cheese stands alone.
I remember looking back in that diary or through notes shared with girlfriends and thinking "My God. If this is part of what being a pre-pubescent girl is about, then I want sons.".

It is for this reason I have been avoiding the blog, facebook, and any social media in which my foot-in-mouth can be formatted online for anyone to see. We've been experiencing some "issues", one of which will be causing us to go to court in the near future. The rage and frustration over this situation with a negligent contractor has me nearly bursting at the seams. Since there is the ever apparent likelihood that we will be moving forward with a court case, I've been hesitant to write for fear that I will say or do something that could come back to bite us in the ass at some point during this process.

So please, forgive my absence these past two months. Don't hesitate to distract me from my living hell by sharing embarrassing examples of when you've suffered from foot-in-mouth or writers remorse. We're aiming for a "make Loony feel good by comparison".